General Teaching Concepts for Tai Chi Chuan

[Martin2]

I added on my blog an article about general teaching concepts in Tai Chi Chuan

http://taichi-philosophy.blogspot.de...cepts-for.html

What are your experience with this?

How were you taught?
How are you teaching?
What do you prefer and why?

I am very curious about your experience.

All the best

Martin

[Matthew]

I generally believe inductive as you describe it leads more toward a student who will improve and critically inquire into the practice rather than blindly accept it.

For example, I went to study with a taichi teacher recently. She told me that my bow-stance could not involve one kua being closed (and must be limited in the range of hip-motion you do, keeping your legs as an "upsidedown U" and not an "upside down V" ) because it causes tension throughout the body and you won't be able to relax into the foot. I intuitively disagree based on my experience with the shaolin practices I've done, so IMO her overly explicit instruction (overly deductive as you described) was [B based on her accepting what her teacher told her rather than inductively discovering whether or not it's accurate[/B].

BUT I believe the deductive description you have is critical a lot of the time, because the teacher needs to give hints, clues, or instruction when a student is practicing obviously incorrectly, or is just a slight mark off.

But in both cases I believe there is an important balance between:

The explicit content of the teaching (e.g. trying to give every explicit detail of intentional awareness, breath coordination, joint alignment, etc.) and the method of teaching delivery (e.g. calmly giving only subtle/few details over time, letting the student intuitively come to understand foundational principles before entertaining more explicit questions of advanced details).

I feel like a good teacher in my instance has a good balance of these principles, but also has enough intuitive awareness to know when and when not to answer a student's explicit question (e.g. is the mind always concentrated on x/y/z? Should the posture do x/y/z during this movement?) in favor of calming their thinking-mind so that it isn't out of balance with their intuitive understanding mind.

That is, one could have all the explicit knowledge of a given movement, what joints must be articulated first, what muscles must be activated at what precise order/timing, where the intention is focused, etc etc. BUT without intuitive understanding of these principles, the knowledge itself is useless and the ability to teach these principles would also be poor.

[Martin2]

Hey Matthew,

thx for the great post.

Two things I like to comment:

1) This little chapter was about a general decision - or to make a compromise between these two. I think you are right - every student - every lesson is different - so one has to adjust to the situation.

2) I like your words "a good balance of these principles" very much. This is how I also think. First get the principles clear for one self - keep them in mind and apply them balanced in the lesson.

All the best

Martin